Teacher inspired by Buffet gives $128M

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NEWTOWN, Pa., Sept. 19 (UPI) -- A retired schoolteacher inspired by billionaire Warren Buffet gave $128 million to a Quaker high school in one of the largest U.S. secondary school gifts ever.

Barbara Dodd Anderson's gift to George School, a 500-student prep school in Newtown, Pa., came about because her father, Columbia University business school Professor David Dodd, invested in Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. when Buffet was starting out.

Dodd, one of Buffet's professors, admitted Buffet to Columbia after Harvard rejected him.

"I would not be who I am today without David Dodd," Buffet told The New York Times after Anderson's donation was announced.

"I'm 75 years old, I have Alzheimer's and I'm probably not going to be around a lot longer," Anderson said to the Times. "So I might as well see the money do some good."

She said Buffett’s own breathtaking donation of $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year inspired her to make her George School gift.

Anderson, born in June 1932, grew up in New York. Her father enrolled her at George School in 1946, and she graduated four years later. She attended St. Lawrence University and earned a master's degree from Columbia Teachers College before marrying and settling in Fresno, Calif., the Times reported